Strategic long term goals and sustainability

Realisation of the four objectives outlined above will provide a stable institutional platform for researchers in Croatia to continue developing and integrating genetics with sciences of the past. Owing to the unique resources and its potential, this group will be almost immediately competitive at the European level and beyond (vis á vis North America). The work programmes have been specifically designed to create and implement structures that will be sustainable beyond the remit of Twinning project funding. These are: web sites, archives of video clips from presentations and YouTube interviews, exhibition materials displayed in Zagreb and Korčula and structures for organising and promoting MIT disciplinary research that can easily be borrowed and modelled by other colleagues (from disciplines included in this project and beyond). At the infrastructural level, the MendTheGap project will contribute to four long-term goals relevant to the sustainability of project objectives.

A) The Faculty of Agriculture within four years of the project’s completion intends to establish a laboratory for aDNA and archaeogenetic analyses (planned to be financed from Faculty, National or next ERA funding resources). The Twinning exercise will provide a comparative knowledge base for planning and staffing such a laboratory as well as the know-how for successfully competing for grants needed to set up such a laboratory. (Direct result of WP3 and WP4, as well as OBJ1-3). Project objectives (1-3) will be sustained through the establishment of such a laboratory.

B) Researchers from the CrEAMA Initiative will acquire the know-how and tools for developing their long-term capacity in using GMM in their research through infrastructure bids at the national and European levels. Project objectives 1-3 will be sustained through the provision and employment of this infrastructure and technology.

C) Researchers from the CrEAMA Initiative will have the know-how and resources to strengthen existing laboratory facilities for integrating the different disciplines of the Sciences of the past with more traditional archaeological research to provide a more holistic understanding of the past. Project objectives 1-4 will be sustained through continued collaborative research projects, museum exhibits and virtual (web) resources. Such collaborative initiatives will involve both partners in the current application and others, especially those expressing an interest as a result of the networks further developed through the present exercise.